Rural Revenge

by K. E. Colombini

Will the entertainment industry seek ways to placate (and profit from) viewers in that great swath of the country referred to as the heartland? Continue Reading »

26 Jan 2017

Brothers and Other Perils

by Betty Smartt Carter

Learning lessons from Molly Hughes’s rollicking chronicles of Victorian family life. Continue Reading »

17 Jan 2017

More Fascinating than Fiction

by Fr. George W. Rutler

The first Elizabeth was a genius and a monster. Elizabeth II is neither, and that could be the formula for banality. But it may be its own kind of power—in life and onscreen. Continue Reading »

29 Dec 2016

Books for Christmas 2016

by George Weigel

Take a stand against the electrification of reading and consider the following, in properly bound form, as gifts for those on your Christmas—not “Holiday”—list: Continue Reading »

7 Dec 2016

Fugitive Commitments

by Richard T. Whittington

Search Party has received praise for its performances and cutting wit. But the series succeeds because it goes beyond generational caricature and hipster-bashing and lays bare an aching human need for narrative and connection Continue Reading »

6 Dec 2016

Cowboys, Robots, and Private Eyes

by The Editors

The First Things Podcast, Episode 15. Featuring: Hardboiled detective novels and HBO’s Westworld.
Continue Reading »

4 Nov 2016

The Exorcist Takes Christianity Seriously

by Wesley J. Smith

Many programs depict evil as real, of course. But only rarely do we see an unabashed presentation of practiced religion as the antidote. Continue Reading »

28 Oct 2016

Disenchanted Westworld

by David Roark

Our engagement with the arts is no longer guided by emotion and imagination, but by reason. It’s why we walk away from a show like Westworld concerned with and moved by logos—“theories”—rather than ethos and pathos. Continue Reading »

20 Oct 2016

The Unpopular Popular Humanities

by Mark Bauerlein

To become an egalitarian in the area of beauty was to cancel your full appreciation of what is great and profound. We all like to slum it, sometimes, but to get too enthusiastic about pop culture materials or, worse, to take them seriously as objects of aesthetic judgment—well, that was an abdication of the critic's responsibilities, not to mention a sign of vulgar taste. Continue Reading »

30 Sep 2016

Look At Me

by Patricia Snow

Even if the Church could keep screens out of her sanctuaries, people strongly attached to them would still be people poorly positioned to take advantage of what the Church has to . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2016